The last time Andy Coulson appeared on this list we said he had made the Conservative party electable again. Well, we were almost right.

Despite failing to win an outright majority David Cameron made it to No 10 and Coulson followed him as Downing Street's new director of communications, earning more than Cameron's deputy, Nick Clegg.

It marked an extraordinary turnaround for the former showbiz journalist and tabloid editor who resigned from the News of the World three years ago in the wake of the royal phone-tapping scandal.

One of Cameron's inner circle of advisers, along with chancellor George Osborne and director of strategy Steve Hilton, Coulson was blamed by some of the Tory leader's critics inside the party for its failure to win an outright majority.

The phone-tapping scandal has continued to dog Coulson after a highly critical parliamentary report published earlier this year accused senior executives at the News of the World's parent company, News International, of concealing the truth about the extent of illegal phone-hacking by its journalists.

The report said there was no evidence that Coulson knew of the phone-hacking, but said he had done the right thing by resigning after the paper's royal reporter, Clive Goodman, was sentenced to four months in prison.

Coulson has always insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity going on in the paper's newsroom, telling MPs: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

The former News of the World editor spent his entire newspaper career at News International – apart from a brief period at the Daily Mail – joining as a reporter on the Bizarre column which he went on to edit.

Coulson set up Page3.com, the first part of the publisher's online empire to turn a profit, before switching to the News of the World in 2000 as deputy to Rebekah Wade, becoming editor in 2003.

An employment tribunal ruled that Coulson had presided over a culture of bullying during his time in charge of the paper when it upheld a claim of unfair dismissal by its former senior sports writer.

A charmer with a ruthless steak, a PR once said of him: "Andy's very clever. He could screw you over and make you feel good about it."